Mencius (Bloom Translation)

Mencius, who lived in the 4th century B.C., is second only to Confucius in importance in the Confucian tradition. The Mencius consists of sayings of Mencius and conversations he had with his contemporaries. When read side by side with the Analects, the Mencius throws a great deal of light on the teachings of Confucius

Mencius developed many of the ideas of Confucius and at the same time discussed problems not touched upon by Confucius. He drew out the implications of Confucius' moral principles and reinterpreted them for the conditions of his time. As the fullest of the four great Confucian texts, the Mencius has been the required reading amongst Chinese scholars for two thousand years, and it still throws considerable light on the character of the Chinese people.

Irene Bloom is professor emerita of Asian and Middle Eastern cultures at Columbia University and Barnard College. She is the editor and translator of Knowledge Painfully Acquired: The K'un-chih chi of Lo Ch'in-shun and, with Joshua A. Fogel, editor of Meeting of Minds: Intellectual and Religious Interaction in East Asian Traditions of Thought.

Philip J. Ivanhoe specializes in the history of East Asian philosophy and religion and its potential for contemporary ethics. He has written, edited, or coedited more than a dozen books, including Readings from the Lu-Wang School of Neo-Confucianism and Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation, and has published more than thirty articles and numerous entries on Chinese and Western religious and ethical thought.